The Boy With No Face
by shootingstella
Summary: "You asked me to run away with you once... kinda" Dramatic Irony: a literary device which gives the spectator or fellow characters a piece of information that another character in the narrative is unaware of.


I've been waiting so long to say this; Stella, has got her groove back.

So I scrapped Forgive me Father. No one was cooperating with me and I hated everything. So, I took it to the chop shop, salvaged all of my favorite ideas, and turned them into one-shots.

This is one, Hoarders 2 will be coming soon, and some other _things._

Um, this story is weird, and it is kind of confusing, maybe. Although I like confusing people, within reason, and I don't think it's 'pull your hair out confusing' just 'read it twice and enjoy it even more the second time' confusing. Idk, maybe that's too much effort for fanfic, whatever.

Anyway, it's for Salmon, because she had a terrible week. Death in the family, angry mobs, road trips, and a rhino-virus on top of that. She is seriously swimming up stream this week so I hope this makes her happy.

* * *

Tate was poised nervously over the bathroom sink, experimenting with a razor blade in one hand and his teen angst clenched tightly in the other. He made several quick slices across his wrist.

One, two, three.

Hard, harder, hardest.

He was pleased to see that even the deepest cut hadn't hurt as badly as he had expected and that the blood pooled in a pretty sort of gradient pattern.  
The razor blade fell into the sink with a clatter; abandoned in favor of having a free hand to swirl the blood up and down his forearm.

"If you're trying to kill yourself…"

Tate spun around to face the strange voice coming from the hallway. He managed to catch the fleeting image of a girl just before she disappeared around the door frame.

He darted after her, "Try harder," she finished, giving him the finger as she coolly walked away.

"How'd you get into my house?" he hollered after her, a hint of too-well-adjusted teasing in his voice. He knew how this place worked and so did she; that was evident from the sound of her laughter, coming from the other side of the floor.

Tate suddenly became aware of the fact that he was bleeding on his jeans.

"She's new," he thought as he latched the door and went back to his razors.

* * *

To Ben and Vivien Harmon, new residents in The Murder House meant that they would have a job to do; their favorite thing. But to Violet, new residents meant Wifi and a hot bath; her two favorite things.

Her toes were tinkling in and out of the water, and there was a little pile of ashes accumulating on the floor beneath that ever present cigarette dangling from her fingers.

The door swung open before she could yell 'occupied' or even curse herself for forgetting to lock it.

"Ugh," Tate said upon seeing her reclining under her blanket of bubbles.

"Nice to see you too."

"Do you think you could, you know…" he wiggled his fingers at her, indicating he wanted her to make like the voodoo woman that she was and *poof*.

"What's the matter? Bladder shy?" she mocked, resting her cigarette on the rim of the tub to flip the page of her book.

"No, but you're naked, and you have no idea how hard it is to take a piss with an erection."

"You don't really have to go dumb ass, now stop ruining my bath time."

"Of course I have to go; I just drank like, a forty of tang. You have to go haunt a different room."

"Tang? What?" the look on Violet's face would have been priceless, if only Tate had possessed the presence of mind to appreciate it. She swished to the other side of the tub to grab a towel and was gone the next second.

* * *

Violet stayed away from Tate for the next few days; after everything that had happened between them and the expansive square footage of the LA Victorian, she never would have expected that to be such a difficult task. So finally, but much sooner than she had hoped, she appeared on his bed, _no, fuck_, her bed, while he busied himself with a book report on the floor.

When he balled up his second draft and chucked it toward the closet, she decided it was a good time to interrupt. "What are you doing?"

"Homework."

"Anything interesting?"

Tate looked up at her, then back down at the page. His brow crinkled, like the words in front of him were no longer in any language he recognized.

Pushing it away and rolling over onto his back, he responded with a simple "Nope."

"What year is it Tate... I forget to keep track sometimes."

"It's 1993."

"Oh. Good." _Oh. You're cracked._

"You making a dent in eternity yet?"

"So you know the deal about the house then?"

"Yea. I'm not stupid….Plus, Nora told me about it when I was little," he added sheepishly, rolling onto his stomach to look at her.

"Wanna listen to music?" he asked, a bit suddenly and it reminded her of the first time he asked.

He was so different like this; confused and harmless instead of insidious and full of bullshit. She nodded, looking forward to his reaction when he found the dusty and unfamiliar music wasting away in her old CD tower.

"What's your name?"

"You know my name."

His fingers drifted to an old copy of Hole with a crack in the cover.

"I'm really trying to give Courtney Love's music a chance," he said as he put the cd on, "You know, for Kurt."

"Of course," Violet nodded sagely, "For Kurt."

They didn't speak for a while, as music filled the room and the space between them.

"Why do you cut yourself?"

"I don't do that shit anymore."

"But I saw you."

"That was like, a year ago."

"Was it?" _It wasn't._

"Yea," he insisted, "Wow it must be tough being stuck here, getting all wrapped up in time and confused."

_Ironic._

"When did you die anyway?"

"Pretty recently."

"Did Constance kill you?"

"No," Violet couldn't help but laugh.

"How'd you die then?"

"I killed myself. Took too many sleeping pills and woke up dead."

"Wow. Did you know you were dead? Like when you woke up… did you feel different?"

"Why do you want to know?"

Tate twiddled his thumbs, "Sometimes I just worry," he said vaguely so she prompted him for more with a look. "Sometimes I worry I'll die here and I won't even know."

"I don't think you need to worry about that."

"How do you know? People are dropping like flies in this house."

"Well if you die, I'll tell you about it."

"Really?" his reaction would have been more appropriate if she had just promised to take him to Disney Land.

She nodded silently, a much more morbid expression straining her features. _Would have appreciated if you had done the same asshole._

"Thanks."

It was awkward silence for a moment before his appreciation subdued and his curiosity flared back up. "So why did you kill yourself."

"You're asking a lot of questions."

"I like stories," he said simply.

"I'll tell you one day, but I think I hear your mom calling you," Violet lied, hoping he was as gullible as he seemed.

Tate groaned, rolling over and pushing up from the floor, muttering "Fucking cocksucker always up my ass," on his way out of the room.

Once she was sure that his clumsy teenage boy feet had pounded all the way down the stairs and out of earshot, Violet rolled over and muttered a deeply disturbed, "Fuck," into the pillow.

* * *

"What are you even doing?" Violet asked, suddenly appearing on the edge of his bed. He didn't respond though. Her presence no longer surprised him, he couldn't be sure of how many times he'd seen her though. He couldn't be sure of anything in this house. He crushed another unmarked pill between the hard wood of his desk and the back of a spoon.

As he helped it up his nose with a rolled up dollar bill she laughed at him.

"Those are aspirin dumbass."

"Go away," he muttered and since she didn't have a choice, she vanished. Tate knew how to handle the ghosts here. They were easy enough to deal with. But there were other things in this house; things that were trickier, stronger, and more demanding. Things that didn't listen to him, things he needed to obey instead. Tate's hand ran smoothly over the gun barrel in his lap. He had it unloaded, dismantled and cleaned before she made her way back up the steps from the basement.

Violet flung herself down onto her bed, his bed; it depended who you asked these days. She rolled over so that her back was to the lunatic in _her_ bedroom.  
He reassembled his antique and kneeled down next to the bed, stashing the piece under the dead girl in _his_ room.

She rolled towards him suddenly, drawing in a sharp breath when his dark eyes peeked up over the threadbare bedspread and locked onto hers.  
Violet scanned his face for something, anything, but he was only vacant black eyes, high on over the counter painkillers and rage.

She'd never met this boy before.

* * *

She's not looking for him when he turns up again. Against all odds she wasn't even thinking about him. All she heard was Chad scolding someone, a child judging by his tone of voice, for bleeding on his shoes. Violet stopped dead on the stairs, so quickly her tea sloshed forward and then back at her.

"Shit," she swore at the hot liquid on her chest, before doubling back into the kitchen to investigate.

There's no way she could have ever anticipated what she found there.

Chad was poised over the kitchen counter, fussing with a wine bottle and opener while Tate loomed over him, invading his personal space. Violet could only see his back but it was enough.

Bullet holes littered the crusty black sweatshirt he was wearing and his blood was seeping slowly, thickly from the wounds.

"Why would I do that?" he whined.

Chad only sighed, obviously annoyed but Violet was frozen.

She'd never seen him like this before, but so much about this moment was familiar. The desperation in his voice, the pain and confusion; she'd heard that before.

_'Where's my baby?'_

_'Look what he did to me.'_

Backing up slowly, Violet tried not to make a sound, until she heard Tate whimper her name; then all bets were off.

The creaking moan coming from the back of her throat had Tate ambling around to face her.

"Why would I do that?" he asked her directly this time, but there was no recognition in his eyes.

"Tate…" she said gently, eliciting an exasperated huff and a dramatic throwing-up of arms from Chad, who muttered something that sounded like 'weak' as he took his bottle of Chardonnay elsewhere.

Tate barely responded to his own name, a sad little hum of acknowledgement that he had heard her but that was it.

What was she supposed to do with him? Her methods of handling Maria and Nora suddenly seemed harsh and cruel. Telling them to 'go away', or if she was feeling playful (read; spiteful) confusing them further.

Telling Tate to go away now wouldn't make him better; it would only make him not her problem, and the thought of hurting him, even after everything he had done to hurt her, made her nauseous.

She smoothed a hand down the sleeve of his faded sweatshirt and earned herself an empty little sob. It sent a fresh wave of nearly black blood to the surface and oozing down his chest. Her nausea flared again and she wondered if she was actually going to throw up. She hadn't since she died but if anything could make her sick, it was this combination of physical gore and emotional turmoil.

"Violet," the way he whined every syllable was a knife in her gut.

"Why would I-"

She cut him off, unable to hear his pathetic mantra one more time; "You didn't do anything."

He whimpered her name again, obviously not soothed by her words. This was going to take a little more effort.

"Come on Tate, it's time for bed."

"Wha-?" he asked, his mouth hanging open in confusion.

She led him, feet squelching through blood every step of the way, up the stairs and to her bedroom.

Violet sat him down on her bed and pushed the bloody sweatshirt off his shoulders, tossing it away with poorly disguised repulsion.

She smacked his face gently a few times, saying his name over and over again in an attempt to get his attention back but he was gone again. She had always hated zombie movies.

"Tate," she whispered, a hand pressed against each of his cheeks. She had an idea of how to fix him, how to bring him back; her hypothesis based on the way Nora usually settled down once you promised her a baby, but it was almost too much for her to say.

How could she admit it to him, when she would rather die than admit it to herself?

One more desperate 'Why would I do that?" and none of that mattered to her anymore.

"I love you Tate," she whispered in his ear, pulling back quickly to watch his expression change from miserable to peaceful, nowhere near happy but pacified for the moment.

His chest was bleeding much less now, so Violet eased him down onto her bed and climbed over to lay behind him.

Tate pulled her hands into his chest, letting out the last rattling breath of his break down.

"I'm tired," he whispered.

"Me too."

* * *

Violet rolled her head from one shoulder to the other and back again, as her mother and Moira tried to fill time with the same 'girl talk' that had become so routine she could have mouthed the words.

"Something's wrong with Tate..." she spit out suddenly during a lull in the chit chat.

The sentence hung in the air there, between the three women for a moment, drifting slowly upwards, considering an escape, maybe it would just be ignored, until Vivien's palms collided with the marble topped table, bringing her daughter's words along with them, shattering the sentence and sending pieces of verbal shrapnel every which way.

"What do you mean!? _Something's_ wrong with Tate?" Vivien asked, her voice was tight with controlled anger.

Her daughter stammered to answer her but before she could get out any coherent words, Vivien snapped; "Don't you mean _everything's_ wrong with Tate!?"

Violet's eyes went wide as her mother began yelling, enumerating just every last thing that was in fact, _wrong_, with Tate.

Moira was smothering a smirk in her tea cup.

Craving a dramatic conclusion, Vivien picked up her half-filled wine glass and chucked it at the refrigerator door.

Seemingly satisfied, she stormed out of the room while Merlot trickled down chrome.

Once Vivien was gone, Moira set her teacup down with a sinister clink and smile.

"What exactly is 'wrong' with him today Miss Violet."

"He's... forgotten everything."

Moira was clearly caught off guard; dumbstruck, jaw open, wheels churning. "Everything?" she asked, and Violet confirmed with a nod.

"Well then, I guess you're just one lucky little bitch."

Violet disappeared out from under her spiteful gaze and slept for the rest of the day.

* * *

Since she realized just how helpless Tate really was, she began watching after him with a new found interest. She kept him away from Chad and Hayden and Mother of God, far far away from her parents. When he got confused and started crying and bleeding, she told him she loved him and put him to bed. When he showed up out of the blue, pinning her against a wall and sucking on her neck, she let him and tried not to enjoy it too much. And when he found himself lost in delusions of his life time, she played along, taking advantage of the time capsule that was his mind to pump him for insight and information about the real Tate Langdon.

Violet knew she wasn't really rewriting their past, but there were times when it felt that way.

-  
The arrangement, though it had never been officially arranged, was going pretty well. It wasn't as emotionally traumatic for her as she had expected it to be. It felt good having something to do, someone to look after; even if it was him. When she realized that _this_ was how he had felt about Nora, it disturbed her. When she asked herself how far she would be willing to go to keep him safe and happy, she ignored him for three days.

By the time she was ready to find him again, Tate was, conveniently, not in the mood to be found. He wasn't in any of his usual haunts, and he didn't take the bait of a legging-less Violet sunning herself in the backyard.

Out of fear that Hayden had gotten to him and was torturing or perhaps dry humping him in his vacant, vulnerable state, she finally forced herself to search the creepy basement.

"Tate!" she called into the pitch darkness, "Come one Tate, I wanna play Scrabble."

In return, she got a hollow laugh and a scuffling noise.

Violet turned around quickly and saw Tate in the corner behind her climbing to his feet.

"Tate?" She asked again and he responded with an eerily relevant, "Barely".

_Oh shit. Actual reality Tate Langdon_. Violet hadn't spoken to him in years and she had to remind herself that she was supposed to hate him.

Tate took a step forward, into the sparse basement lighting and Violet saw that he might just be too broken to hate. His knuckles were red, clothing disheveled and eyes puffy like he had been crying but wasn't any more.

"What do you want Vi?" he sounded confused and distressed but Violet had a feeling that while his angst was usually caused by not understanding anything, this was how he looked when he was trying to understand too much.

"To play Scrabble," she said simply.

"Do we... do that now?"

"We haven't... in a while."

"What _do_ we do then?"

"You don't know?"

"I don't know anything."

"It's okay," she comforted him out of habit. "Just come play with me."

"I.- I don't wanna play Scrabble."

"Don't bullshit me Tate, just come on."

"You're the one bullshitting me."

"I'm not."

"I remember."

She sighed,_ how fucking miserable_.

"How much do you remember?"

"Not a lot... but enough."

"So you know..."

"I'm losing my mind."

"It's alright…"

"Stop. Saying that!" Tate pulled at his hair with fists that snapped back and hard and fast.

"Don't do that," Violet pleaded, quiet at first but then again, louder when it only got worse and she had to step in to calm him down.

Her hands on his, and her kind words only continued to stir up more memories that he couldn't make sense of.

"Why do I remember kissing you, and talking to you, and _holding_ you? Did any of that even happen?"

Her guilty silence was all the confirmation he needed.

"How could you do this to me?" he yelled, PO'd for some reason she didn't understand.

"What do you mean? I did it for you!"

"You made a mess of my head. I don't know what's real or not."

"You were a mess anyway. And stop being such a hypocrite! You're the one who made a mess of me!"

"I was trying to protect you!"

"That's all I'm doing now!"

The anger in his face broke for a second as she continued.

"I keep you away from the ghosts who hate you and I hang out with you when you think you're grounded, and when you start bleeding, and crying," her voice was breaking, "I give you a kiss and I put you to bed."

He stood, shell shocked as she listed all of the blissfully wonderful things he remembered but thought he invented.

"Why?" he asked her with an absent minded and appreciative finger drifting over his lips.

"It's the right thing to do. You'd do the same thing for me... I hope."

"I wouldn't touch you."

She rolled her eyes, "But also…."

"What?"

"Never mind."

"Tell me, I won't remember anyway," he chuckled darkly.

Violet tried stuffing her mouth with her cuticles, but the truth was fighting its way out; "I, um, I guess I'm trying to see if you deserve another chance."

Tate's mouth hung open and his eyes widened, "What? What can I do? I mean, what would make you…?"

"Nothing, you can't plan it. I just, I want to see if you'll be honest with me."

Tate opened his mouth to speak, to promise her that he would never lie to her again, but fuck, he knew as well as she did how unlikely that was with his track record and without his presence of mind.

Tate sighed, seeing the hopeless expression on Violet's face that mirrored his own and wanted to change it to something, anything else, "So you really don't touch me at all?"

She blushed immediately and almost smiled, "I don't touch you much. And usually I just _let_ you touch me."

"I'd _never_ touch you first," it sounded like a promise and she realized that he not only meant it, but anticipated it. _This is what we'll all become. _Violet wondered when Tate figured that out.

"Maybe," she scoffed, appreciating the lighter mood. "Do you mind, that, I let you?" Violet asked, real curiosity bubbling up for the first time because it had never occurred to her that it might feel like a violation on his end, just as much as it would on hers.

"No. Why _don't_ you mind though?"

Violet shrugged, unhappy with her answer, "When you don't remember what happened, it's easier for me to forget too. Sometimes, when you're the boy you were before any of that happened, I _really_ like you."

"Sometimes?"

"You're still a little shit."

"Fair enough."

She nodded, and wiped away the left over tear on her cheek while he silently appraised his new information.

"Have we...?"

"No!"

"Okay good."

"Excuse you."

He smiled, "I don't mean it like that. It's just, if we did… I'd want to remember it."

* * *

The perfect opportunity for Violet to test Tate's moral compass came on a warm afternoon, it was almost Spring and she was sitting quietly on the wall behind the property, counting how many cigarettes she had left; sighing every time she made number go down. He swung around the brick column with her name on his lips like some kind of silly little children's song.

"Hey, Tate."

"Hey, Gloomy."

She smiled at him, figuring that in his mind, they were post-Harmons, pre-bathtub.

"Are your parents around?" he asked as he lifted himself up onto the wall, and she shook her head as she pulled in her feet to make room for him.

In his current reality, he was dead and pretending to be alive for her benefit, but in the actual reality, she was dead and pretending to be alive for his benefit. Violet didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Shouldn't you be in school?" he asked with a smirk, clearly enjoying her truancy.

"Shouldn't you be six feet under?" she returned. Her heart was racing with expired adrenaline but she needed to do this. How many times had she laid awake in bed, thinking about how different things would have been, if only she'd known then what she knew now? Well he's got early onset Alzheimer's and she's got the perfect opportunity.

To his credit, all he did was smirk; invade her space a little bit more. All the bravado she expected but still none of the lies.

"Told you I could scare you."

"You don't scare me."

His breath was blowing hot across her lips now and she had to admit, of all the memories she could have picked to re-live, guilt free and in the name of science, this was top three.

"When did you figure it out?"

"Last week."

"You're so smart," he kissed the corner of her mouth; brushing his nose against hers in a way that made her eyes tear.

He inched closer and closer to the center of her mouth, reaching a hand out to cup her cheek, but stopped immediately when he found tears.

Pulling his face back to examine hers and swiping a thumb through them, he whispered, "Don't cry... I love you..."

The sob she would have choked on turned into a laugh as she exhaled, "God. You're so intense."

Tate smiled a little as he sat back against the wall; he wasn't sure if that was what he wanted to hear, but he knew it could have been a lot worse.

She smiled back at him because he hadn't denied it. It was now or never.

She climbed in between his open legs, bringing her face close to his, invading _his_ personal space for once.

"How did you die Tate?"

He frowned immediately, squirmed away from her a little bit. "I um…"

"I want to know Tate... I want you to tell me," _For once. _There was desperation in her eyes and she could tell it was making him uncomfortable, but she couldn't help it. She needed this. She needed to know that he had learned something though all of this. She needed to know it wasn't all for nothing.

"I can't."

She sighed, "Why not."

"I'd scare you."

"You haven't yet."

"I was a bad person. I hurt people, and then…. The police shot me. Upstairs." He looked miserable.

"Are you still a bad person?" she asked, hoping he wouldn't question her complete lack of surprise.

"No! No I'm not!" Hope was bursting out of each and every one of his pores, "I mean, I'm not great," he smiled a little, "But since I met you Violet," he was staring at her with pure adoration, "You've changed me."

She smiled a little, he might be right; but she still needed more proof.

* * *

Usually when you hear eerie music emanating from somewhere deep inside a haunted house, you _don't_ follow it, but Violet was already dead and had nothing left to lose, so she sought it out immediately. The sad, slow tune brought her upstairs, to the far side of the house. It was a big loft type room, more windows than walls and acoustics that not even 30 years' worth of moving boxes could compromise. Violet hadn't spent much time here, during her lifetime or afterwards, but Vivien seemed quite comfortable, sitting in the center of the room with her cello propped up against her lap.

"Mom?" Violet whispered, but Vivien didn't respond at all, only kept playing, dragging each individual note out until it sent shivers down her daughter's spine.  
Violet circled closer to her mother, trying to figure out what so unsettling about this situation. She should be perfectly familiar with her mother's music, she'd heard it constantly growing up, maybe not recently, but she remembered it fondly.

When she came to stand directly in front of Vivien, she gasped and nearly choked on bile.

The blood stain between her mother's legs was revolting, unnatural and it had the characteristic slow spread of age.

"Mommy," Violet whispered again, but all she got was a barely noticeable twitch of her mother's lips in response.

This wasn't right. Her mother needed to be here; she needed to be capable. Violet could feel that impulse to fix her, to wake her up, to bring her back to reality and it was even stronger than the one she felt whenever she saw Tate like this; probably because it was driven by that selfish need for her parent's care that she never really gave up.

But the ghost of a smile was spreading across Vivien's face as she approached the end of her song. She looked vacant, empty, but not completely unhappy. Violet took a step back from her mother then. This might actually have been the happiest she'd ever seen her; completely unaware of everything, no responsibilities or heartaches. It looked like for Vivien Harmon, ignorance was bliss.

* * *

Tate showed up in her room the next week, reading one of her books and sitting in her old dusty arm chair like he'd been there all day. She barely even acknowledged him, knowing he'd talk when he was ready and by the grace of God, give her some clue as to where in time he thought they were.

"You should skip school today."

Violet smiled and crossed the room to her closet, pretending to pick out an outfit for the day.

Her performances were getting intense, props and everything.

"I have to Tate, I've missed too many days already," she sighed, "Now come help me pick a sweater."

He walked up behind her, placing hands on her hips while she rifled through the few articles of ancient clothing in front of her. "I prefer no sweater," he said as he nudged the straps of her tank top out of the way with his lips.

"Oh, okay, I'll just go to school like this," she said, earning herself a possessive growl from Tate that he buried in her neck while he wrapped his arms tighter around her.

"Just for you?"

He nodded, sliding a hand up the front of her shirt.

"I guess I could miss…" Tate spun her around and pulled her close, "One more day." He smiled big and started dragging her back towards the bed, already fiddling with the waistband of her leggings.

"Tate," she whined, recalling a handful of memories that started out like this, and knowing exactly how they ended up. She didn't want it though, or at least, she didn't want to want it. But oh, those memories were so good, and it had been so long and just thinking about the way they had been had her clawing at his skin.

But regardless, she had to stop it. This couldn't happen while Tate was like this.

"I love you," he said as he laid her down against her bed, but she could only respond with more kissing. Returning that sentiment was still a desperate measure saved for desperate times.

He got her leggings all the way off, and her hands were working through the row of buttons on the front of his flannel shirt.

Reexamining her logic, she quickly found a loophole; if they couldn't do it while Tate was like this, he'd just have to _stop_ being like this.

"Tate," she said urgently as he rutted up against her center.

"Mmm?" he hummed against her neck.

"Tate you have to wake up," she pleaded as her fingers dipped below the waist of his jeans, contrary to her resistant state of mind.

"I'm not dreaming Vi," he sounded a little confused but kept kissing her.

"You have to remember," she almost moaned, giving into the temptation to undo the button on his fly.

"Shit, I um, I don't have one-" he stammered as her hands spread across his chest. "We don't have to do that though. We can just-"

"I'm not talking about a condom Tate," she sighed, pushing him over on the bed so that she could climb on top of him. "We don't need one anyway. I'm dead."

He froze immediately, "Violet, how do you-?"

"Tate, you need to remember what happened." She started kissing her way from his lips, downwards as she spoke. "I'm dead. You fucked up," she punctuated that one with an especially hard bite to his bare shoulder. "We broke up, and I sent you away."

"What?" It was impossible for him to continue on with their activities while she overwhelmed him with all this information, so he lay still underneath her while she multitasked above him, reminding and ravaging him.

The hands that had been resting gently on her calves went slack "Why would I do that?" he whined. She knew she wasn't going to have to push him much further. He was completely unresponsive after that. Laying there, just empty, eyes closed and face slack while she softly called his name and kissed his neck. When he opened them again, he looked like he was just waking up, "Violet?" he asked, confused and surprised to find himself half naked and more than half hard underneath her.

"Are you… back?"

"From what?"

"What year is it?"

"I've lost track."

She kissed him again straight on the lips because she knew it was Tate. All of Tate.

"What are you doing?"

"You said that if we did _this_," she licked a stripe from his collarbone to the space just beneath his ear, pulling away with a gentle suck, "You'd want to remember it."

"Then why are we doing it?"

"Don't ask questions you already know the answer to," she started but he had her rolled over and underneath him, silenced with his tongue in her mouth before she could finish.

"Is this your way of saying you forgive me?" he asked hopefully from his recently reclaimed side of the bed as she lit up on the window sill.

"Never" she choked out, holding onto that first inhale of smoke.

"Well then why?"

"You were honest with me. For the most part," she added with a little smile.

"So, you haven't forgiven me, but, can we be together again, like for real?"

"Not yet," she sighed out with a lung full of smoke.

* * *

It was weeks later when the pieces of Violet's plan, finally fell into place.

Tate was in the basement, playing ball with Thaddeus, and chit chatting, mostly with himself, about the arrival of the new residents.

It was really Tate's state of mind that she had been waiting on, Nora was easy.

Violet swung around the doorframe of Nora's current haunt, an abandoned upstairs bedroom, wrinkled her forehead with worry and said the one sentence no one in their right mind would prompt Nora Montgomery with; "Where's your baby?"

I was enough to set her off, of course. Tears sprang to her eyes and she began ringing her hands nervously as she surveyed the room.

"I- I don't know..."

Violet nodded sadly, "I'm so sorry Nora..."

"Sorry for what?" Nora asked suspiciously as she rose from her chair and approached Violet "What happened to my baby! What did you do with my baby!?"  
Violet caught the woman's hands in midair, just before they cinched around her throat, and rushed to tell the woman that she hadn't done anything; her baby just died.

Nora dissolved to the floor in front of Violet, clutching at her chest and gasping for her child.

Violet pulled a face but quickly got back into character, comforting the older woman as she cried.

"My baby is gone," she wailed and Violet nodded, "I know, I know Nora, I'm sorry."

After the woman cried for what Violet deemed an appropriate mourning period, she decided it was time to try brightening the mood.

"It's okay Nora, you can get a new baby."

"What? No I- I couldn't- I can't have any more children."

"That's alright, you could adopt, and then you can have a little baby again."

"Adopt?"

"You could take someone else's baby," she clarified.

Nora pretended to be appalled by the idea, but that slowly gave way to curiosity, "Who- whose baby could I adopt? There aren't many for the taking," she mused sadly.

"Well someone around here is bound to make one sooner or later, then you could just have that one."

"But it could be years before that happens," Nora whined.

Violet shuddered inwardly before suggesting that there might be something they could do to hurry the process along.

Violet watched from the shadows while the rest of her plan unfolded.

She had been hoping for some kind of glorious realization on Tate's part. He'd prove to Violet that he'd learned his lesson and then explain to Nora why rape was wrong. A star would shoot across the attic with 'The More You Know' emblazoned on its tail and that would be that.

Unfortunately, this was not 'A very special episode' of The Murder House, and things were not going according to plan.

Violet had to chew the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming while Tate agreed to help Nora get her baby back by sleeping with the new lady of the house.

Violet couldn't close her eyes without seeing visions of how this would go terribly wrong, burning into her eyelids. She had just put back into motion the single most traumatic event of her life, her mother's life, and despite a rap sheet that just wouldn't quit, probably also Tate's life.

This had to be the house's doing; this mess. It was evil and warped all of the good intentions into ugly, unrecognizable things.

She followed him up to the attic as he scoped out his victim, her mother.

All Violet had wanted was some proof that Tate learned his lesson, that he was capable of making a good decision, that she had really changed him.

Instead, she was going to have to watch everything that ruined them the first time happen again, but this time it would be her doing, her fault, her who had changed.  
-

* * *

Up in the attic, Tate was standing over Vivien as she sorted through a box on the floor, so Violet stayed invisible on top of the pull down stairs. Violet stretched up on her tippy toes to peak across the room and inside the boxes and saw that it was filled with the dusty old picture frames, filled with snapshots of a happier and livelier Harmon family, which used to adorn every flat and level surface of The Murder House back in their day.

Violet knew a lot could go wrong right now, as Tate's head tipped to the side at an unnatural angle, watching Vivien's every move, but she still hoped that whatever happened next, it wouldn't disrupt her mother's pleasant state of mind.

Vivien polished the edges of an old silver frame, breathing on the glass before wiping away the dust. She slipped in a picture of Ben and her with Violet in the middle.

Tate's facial expressions were small but now that they had Violet's full attention, she caught each one; the little pick-ups in the corners of his mouth, the concerned wrinkles on his forehead, and the ever so slight shake of his head as he stepped back and then disappeared.

Violet smiled, breathing out a sigh of relief. Her hands shook with the come down of her panic but she felt more solid inside than ever. She smoothed out the skirt of her dress and wiped the space under her eyes out of habit before going to stand behind her mother.

"Those look really nice mom," she said over her shoulder. Vivien looked up and smiled, picking another picture from the box to frame next.

"Thanks Vi, I'm only gonna frame the nicest ones, and I'll just throw the rest away." Vivien exclaimed, "We should only have to keep the nicest memories."

* * *

Violet spent a day and a half, not that long for a ghost actually, lying in bed desperately searching for her reset button.

She skimmed through some of her old high school homework, remembering where she was the first time she read Lord of the Flies and trying to get lost in it. When that didn't work she let herself drift off into day dreams of her life until she fell asleep, but each time, she woke up knowing exactly who and where she was. Unfortunate.

She knew that she might as well just wait for the old age to take hold of her; it inevitably would, but she was impatient. She wanted it now. Needed it now.

_It shouldn't be this hard_ she lamented, rolling over to bury her face in her pillow. It's not like it hadn't happened before, she'd forgotten once, maybe not everything but anything that mattered.

In a flash of inspiration and one last ditch effort she dragged her emotionally exhausted self into the bathroom. Violet stared down into the tub for a while, and had to admit, this was probably the best idea.

She climbed in, feeling just a bit smug for having figured it out, and reclined backwards, until her ankles and her neck were each resting over the rims.

She closed her eyes and wiggled a bit, seeking comfort despite the cold porcelain. With her eyes closed, she waited, opening one to peak when her patience started running thin. After an uneventful twenty minutes past, she realized she was going to have to make a whole big _thing_ out of this.

She marched back to her room, stripping off her sweater and grabbing a razor blade off her night stand, heading back to the tub with new determination.

The second she laid down in the tub and turned the water on, he showed up, confused, but in a much smaller sense of the word than usual.

"Violet what are you doing?"

She smiled at him from underneath the hammering water droplets, fingering the razor blade in one hand, still a little nervous.

He took a step closer to her and she split her arm open, wincing from the pain before dropping it into the tub.

"Violet... you promised not to…"

"Shut up. You asked me to run away with you once... kind of..."

"What?" he stammered, as his own head was invaded by a blur of familiar images and places.

"I hope this works," she muttered before the dizzying sensation in her head became too much and she slumped into the water.  
-

* * *

"Don't you know any other games?" she asked, coming to sit in front of him and his hopeless round of solitaire.

"I'm not sure," he admitted.

"That's alright," she said sweeping his cards together into a little pile.

"Hey-"

"Relax, I'm gonna teach you how to play rummy."

"Okay," he conceded almost immediately. "So," he appraised her as she dealt, "Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm Violet, I'm dead."

She smirked, and if there was a hint of humor there, or maybe a spec of recognition in his eyes, it didn't matter anymore.

"Me too, I'm Tate."

She smiled and put the deck down between them.

"What happens now?" he asked.

"You draw a card, and discard."

* * *

now that you're done with this, you should also read;

Kismet by Lola

Black Magic Woman by Gin

and the ever so sacrilegious Meet me in the Middle by Julia.


End file.
